All right, Good afternoon, everyone. It's 4:00 we're going to go and get this meeting call to order roll call, please. Mrs. Konz, here, Mrs. Shandy here, Mr. Wilburn. Mrs. Yanez. Here. Mr. Salt here. Thank you, Mrs. Mattsson-Bonett, Are there any updates to the agenda? There were no updates to the agenda Thank you board. Are there any discussion items needed to be added to the agenda? May we have a motion to
approve the agenda, please Mrs. Konz, aye. Mrs. Shandy, aye. Mrs. Yanez, aye. Mr. Salt. Aye. Do you call Mr. Wilburn as he dropped? Yes, he was on. I saw his picture but. Mr. Wilburn. I'm still showing them on here I I show them on here too. Mr. Wilburn, are you muted? He doesn't have audio, he just posts in the chat and he didn't have any audio. OK. All right, Well, the motion carries. See if we can get him working with that the first item
on the agenda is information regarding updated ballot language for bond question appearing on November 5, 2024 coordinated election ballot. This is updated from Bond language approved during August 8th, 2024 Board meeting. Ms. Becky Allan, please. Becky, are you there? I don't click on click on, click on the carrot next to mic. Can you hear us now? Yes, I can hear us. OK. I'm sorry Director Salt. Everyone kind of froze there for a minute with your
permission, I'd like to just kind of start out with some general statements and hand it over to Ms. Allan That sounds great. Thank you. OK, so board as you know, we have an initiative on the ballot. It's a once in a generation opportunity. To partner with the Department of Defense in order to get a brand-new high school. As well as a center of excellence, which would have career pathways and career academies available for all of our students as well as not only at
at Air Academy, but across the district As a recap, we know that when that partnership with the Department of Defense, they would pay 80% of the cost with us having 20% of the cost of brand-new high school costing about two 0 million. So in that partnership. The Department of Defense would pay about 191 million. And if the bond were to pass then the money from the bond from the D20 portion would be 49 million. We also know that Air
Academy high school is about 65 years old and we have over $70 million worth of repairs that need to be done on this high school. And we know that if the bond were to pass, then we would be able to take the repairs, the money that would have had to go towards those repairs and reprioritize. On our funding as it comes into other projects in the district. And so as we had some original bond language and then this summer there were two items that were put on the ballot 1
108 and 50. So as the governor held a special l session over the past few days in response to two items on the ballot again, those were 108 and 50, which would d have resulted in significant funding constraints for school districts if they were to pass. There these were recent developments that materialized quickly over the past months and weeks. And we now have a better understanding after following as we've been following this special session. And Becky will speak to this a little bit more. But overall, this means we have to capitalize
on our opportunity now due to uncertainty for the funding in the future. So now I'll ask Director Ms. Allen to take it from here. Thank you, Superintendent Haberer. I really appreciate that introduction because that's the why that we're here. For those who are listening back on August t 8th, the Board of Education already approved bond language, but for the piece that Superintendent Haber just mentioned, we had some potential change
circumstances and needed to re-evaluate if we were maximizing this opportunity specifically those change circumstances were around the two initiatives. 50 and 108 that are slated to be on the ballot in November. And as Superintendent shared it t really would constrain by lowering property tax rates would have quite an impact on the revenue. Why are we not having this meeting
during our regularly scheduled meeting on September 12th Because the deadline to certify ballot language for the county is September 6th. So that is why this special meeting has been convened. Some updates occurred this week, so. In response to these ballots, Governor Polis has been working and you if you read it or hear about it on the news or online, they refer to it as a deal and my summary y is that Governor Polis issued a
special legislative session this particular week starting on Monday, trying to come to some middle e ground between the supporters of 50 and one. Oh also. Lowering property tax rates. And so the legislative session has been convened starting Monday and they've worked through today as well and what we now know that's been changing ng by the hour today is that House bill 24B100 has passed both legislative chambers at the state level and now
w it's with the governor to sign, however my understanding is that he will not sign that bill until Initiatives 50 and 108 are. Removed from the state ballot now the deadline for that again is September 6th. They're e held to the same deadline that we e are, so we don't know if that will happen this week or next week, perhaps with the holiday weekend, the early part of next week, but again, we anticipate if everyone follows
through that this particular House bill then n would go into effect. So here are some of the highlights of that house Bill. I won't go into too many details and certainly if you have questions s, I'd be more than happy to. Answer those so for tax year r 2024, that's the money that is collected in 2025 the e numbers that we've been looking at as we've made projections around the bond are still accurate It's a 6.7% residential assessment rate with
the 1st 55,000 of actual home value exempted and again, that's as s we shared information with you during the August 8th meeting. Those are the assumptions that we use then and they are still valid even with the new house bill. What's planned in House Bill 2410 01, those changes would go into effect tax year 2025 That means that's the tax bills, the property tax
bills that get paid in 2026. There would be a property tax limit for school districts that would help determine. The residential assessment rate. What is new for us at that point is there would be two different assessment rates we're used d to having one when we get our property tax x bill, there will be one rate for school districts and a different rate for non school districts on the property tax bill. And just to give you an idea
the school district residential assessment rate would be either 7.05% or 6. 95% It depends on some statewide actual value growth that's happening but non school districts, their residential assessment rate for other entities like metro districts or library districts they would be 6.2 25% and it could also lower to six depending on
statewide growth. What I take away from that again, if you just look at those values. We talked about 6.7% as residential assessment rate with this new legislation for non school districts those rates s would be lower. So what are my takeaways from m that? Well, two things So one piece is there is a limit for school districts The second one is that when other entities
s in the state are collecting lower property taxes. It means there's less revenue at the state level. And remember the job of the state level, if folks can imagine my corny jar my bucket filled d with sand. First we pour the local property tax sand in that bucket and the state has to fill it to as high as it can go to the top now because we have no budget stabilization
on factor, they have to put enough orange sand. That bucket to the top when less revenue is being collected. In property taxes, the result is potentially that the state doesn't have enough sand to fill every bucket, and it could mean that the budget stabilization factor comes back And that is really what prompted us to take a look and say, OK, can we increase the amount of the bond ask of our
While still ensuring that the tax rate or the levy falls for our community, whether or not the bond passes and so o that is what we have gone ahead and want to share with you tonight. Are you able to see on your screens in front of you the PowerPoint slide that has two boxes on it? Yes, wonderful. Thank you for that feedback. This is a one stop shop to really see
what the changes are between what you have already approved in Bond language on August 8th that is on the left t part of your screen, on the right part of your screen is the proposal to add. 14,000,000 Why did we pick 14,000,000 Well l, we ran the numbers in terms of the impacts of an increase and again we we have prioritized that for our community even if the bond d were to pass that the levy would fall and
the bigger that we would make this increase the less it would fall, It would still fall, but we didn't t want to degrade that amount. So let's look at some of the highlights. 1st at the top you'll notice 69.14 million was the amount that you approved already the e consideration this evening is to increase that by 14 4,000,000 to just over 83,000,000. We'd still pay back the bonds in 25 years. You can see the annual payment would be about $1,000,000 higher
each year. The total repayment would be higher 155,000,000. But now these next two pieces are critical especially this part in blue when you look back on the left. Going to use a 400,000 0 actual home value because the median home value in our region is a bit over 400,000 so this is a good number to use as an example for what the board approved back on August 8th. If the bond passed the
he levy would reduce by one point ls and that's highlighted in yellow. That equates to a savings of a little over $32 for the year. So again on the right in n looking at increasing, we still wanted to preserve a healthy decrease and if you take a look with this particular scenario o, if the bond passes, the levy would reduce by 1.019 mills and that's
s equivalent to a little over $23 per month or excuse me for the year. These are not monthly, these are annual. In purple. Are our folks in our school district our r constituents can see what the fall of the levy would be if the bond did not pass. And again, this is for the year. Either way, it's the same it would fall about 3.245 mils again about ut $75 for the year Finally, just a couple of notes on the components
f the bond language. No change to the $49 million piece. No change to the charter piece. What would change? Is these $14 million from the increase would exclusively go to the non charter schools in the district for health, safety and security and the new ballot language that will show in a moment will call out t to our older schools as well. It doesn't mean the older schools are the only ones benefiting
but they are certainly the ones that are getting the biggest increases of the dollars and I'll talk about. That a little more in a moment. So those are the conditions with which we would be asking for this $14 million increase now w certainly we need to be able to define not only for you the board, but also our r community, what would these projects look k like? So, Mr Sacoliti, would you please do me a a favor and would you please put the?
By project type. PDF up so. Board directors, what you see in front of you, there are two lists of bond projects that have been created They're both for 83.14 million They are just looked at from a different perspective The one that is on your screen in front of you is by project type. You will see Air Academy High School and that and the second one is building security. So you see
all of the locations that would be impacted. And the pool of money that would be put into that for ballistic film as an example 1.6 million in that same box as an example, you also see one e particular school called out for a project, which is the DA Vinci Academy, and this is showing that 2 000 would also be spent on inter interior security upgrades. Mr Sakhaliti, could you go to the next page, please e? And I promise I will not go through all of these.
These are posted for our community on board docs, but on the next one you can just see the different types of projects laid out. Now the list you have in front of you is by school and I'll use Academy Endeavour as an example You can see the projects that they would specifically get first t of all, we put the acronym for the school so if a community member is looking at the other project list they could easily know what school it's referring to.
And we felt it would be important to also put the age of the building there. And So what you see is as you go through this list and let's go ahead, Mr Sacoliti could d you go to let's go to Challenger Middle School, which as I think you've got it there at the bottom of that second page. So what we e see as an example. Is we've got some singular projects for Challenger an additional ADA compliant
t bathroom 250,000. A complete complete the carpet replacement work there for 1.3 million Create a lab at Challenger Middle School for E sports broadcast journalism and digital media for 150 000 Theatre and stage maintenance for 7000 0. Underneath that you see some of what I call the district wide projects that have a bucket of money associated with them so they will have a portion of the
e ballistic window film. They will have a portion and by portion their whole school would be outfitted, but these are showing the bucketed items and which schools would benefit from them so o you see some HVAC repairs and some LED lighting you u look at the total there and it shows that the money allocated from this bond for Challenger Middle School is about 1.7 million n plus. The portions of the window film the e HVAC repairs, and the LED lighting. And as I said, I
certainly will not go through every project. These are available. I'm happy to take any questions you have. But we wanted to it to be very clear and when you get to the final page, you see that the total is the 83.14 million and certainly y we would invite our community to go ahead and look at this for complete clarity on what the projects are. Now some might be wondering g, well, I didn't see a whole committee put together back in 2016. There was a whole committee for
a year each school had. Each principal had a committee of constituents for their school, and they came together to identify the projects this opportunity y now in 2024 is very different than in 2016. The community knew and had the time a year in advance to spend that time developing the list of projects for us. Now our timeline has really been driven by the PSMI, the e Public Schools on Military Installations program it was
not until mid March. That we had our federal evaluation team visit and we learned from the folks who visited that they were only going to approve a rebuild of air Academy and Douglas Valley while e Douglas Valley we've made the commitment from the get t go that we would fund from our internal funds here the just under $13 million match to rebuild Douglas ey Elementary School. However, we then took April. To really look at what will it cost to
rebuild air Academy high school and we saw thought about $238 million When we look at the match for that, that's 49 million we do not have the capability to sell fund 49 million we even looked at at certificates of participation that don't require voter approval and we would just basically get a loan and d have to repay that for 25 years. We can't guarantee with the funding uncertainty and being funded dead last in the state that we have the
money to pay that bill, so that is why it was so critical we did not have e the time frame we went right into o May giving a presentation to the board and in June there was a measure to that the board adopted to say it's our intent to be on the ballot The next board meeting was in August. And that is the one where we presented the language to certify, because September 6th is the date that language has to be certified, so
there wasn't the opportunity for those long term types of committees. However, I want the board to rest assured that principals went over this list. I met with every principal and we had the opportunity to look at that and we made multiple modifications. In fact, I can tell you we probably changed about 1.5 million in projects based upon the feedback from principals and in fact t there were a lot of meetings with those principals on
Tuesday and I assured them you will hear from me tonight, some of those principles. Got a call from me at 9:00 at night and when they heard that some of the projects that they had advocated for that we were able to fund them, they were pretty excited about that. And grateful for the opportunity for their students and their school community. So I just that is an important thing for you to know our principles are the leaders in our buildings and we value ue them and their school communities and their students tremendously
So I want you to know that their voice and nd their needs are all over this project list. All right, so now, Mr Sacoliti, if you could please show the actual agenda item for the information. That would be wonderful. There's a section in there that shows the ballot language and it has some highlighted areas in yellow that I just want to point out to the Board of Education. Thank you Sir. You're right in the right place there, so
board I wanted to highlight because this language is very dense and it can be tough to almost see what the changes are. So for ease of comparison, we have highlighted in here what changed. In the beginning part, obviously the dollar amount, right, it was 69.14 now and it's 83.14. The maximum repayment increased to 155,000,000 in the bullets. In that second bullet, this is what we had
9 million for before now is 23 million. We wanted to call out for clarity that this is or non charter schools. We also added ed the older schools because again as you look through. That project list you will see the higher dollar amounts for Challenger Middle School Rampart High School schools on the West side e like Woodman, Roberts, Foothills Elementary School, Rock Rim and elementary School and I think I mentioned Challenger those are some of our oldest schools while
hile other schools have improvements, they have the most because they have the most needs. The other part that I wanted to mention is you can see at the end there's crossed out language. This was language that we actually needed to add new in on for August 8th because there was so much uncertainty around 50 and 108 and what could potentially happen in these ballot initiatives that would make it more difficult for us to issue bonds. Kim
Crawford, our bond attorney, Dan O'Connell, our expert on mill levies and everything Bond and MLO have both advised us. That with where we are with the current legislation, there is no need to have this in here and in fact there is some protection in the legislation of House e Bill 241001 where we know that these changes do not affect bonds, so o that is why you can rest assured that part of the
language, that's the why. So that's all I have for you. What questions might you have for me and before I take e questions, I just want to stress. This is an information only item once. You're welcome to ask me questions now but when you feel you're done with this item then the board would be considering the actual l actual new ballot language in a resolution that you would vote upon. You certainly could ask me questions then as well, but I just wanted to clarify the cadence.
Thank you, Miss Allen. Board members, any questions? No questions here. I think Becky covered it pretty well. You said all principals saw the list and approved the list. Correct. Yes, ma'am, we went through it and people would say we like it one e principal said. Becky, we don't need that new theater curtain. We got that two years ago, but we need this And so we had asks from principals Some of them were asks that we couldn't make happen for this bond. But the principal knows the why, but
so many of the requests we could make happen. And when we couldn't do it, then we were able to do something else, maybe a little smaller scale and d like I said when I called and said we're getting it in there, what really those were some e of the responses. They were so excited and they said our parents and our kids, our staff are going to appreciate these things. Awesome. Thank you for sharing that. So, Miss Allen, the sounds like the principles are mostly happy with the list and the projects we're going to be able to do at their
buildings. Yes, awesome, I saw some changes in the list from when we first were talking about it. The other day. So I appreciate you, the team from you the work from you and your team. Sorry. Making this happen and making sure that we were hitting the actual needs of the schools across the district. Thank you, and the principle and the principles I want to thank them. They made so much time for this conversation and we're so helpful. So it's just a great partnership. Great. So I've got a couple of questions. One
you likely will not know the answer to, but I'm going to ask it I got an update from one of the There's so many like legislative watchdogs out there and all of these communities. And so this came for me. Like third, fourth hand, some group I've never even heard of that was watching the session that was s coming on and one of the things they put in here was that t there's an establishment of an annual local government cap. K12 would be 6
0 cap on property tax revenue is s that a 6% increase cap year over year? Is that what that 6% is? This is my understanding. So first of all, it's statewide, Mr Salt. So it's not District 20 then n District 11 then n Pooter. It's a statewide look k at the local share for total program funding property
ty taxes. So they will look and say did it go up? By more than 6% or less than 6%. And whether that answer is yes or no dictates what the school district residential assessment rate will be. So if the growth is less than the 5%, then the rate is a little higher at 7.0 5 if it's bigger than 5%.
Then the school district residential assessment rate is 6 95%. So it's like a test. It's a test that says, do you go in this direction for this particular residential assessment rate or in this direction? There's one other piece in there that I don't I understand a little, but I want to say I don't feel like an expert where they can look over A2 two year period. And my understanding is that they can kind of look
and see maybe that you might have a lower year and a higher year. But it averages about 6 So that piece is in there as well. But again it's s sort of like a gatekeeper in which direction do you go if the growth is higher the rate e is lower if the growth is is lower, the rate is higher just for that differentiated and the 6% is what they're looking at That's the, I might have said 5% and I
apologize, it's 6%. Right. Thanks. That's helpful. I didn't realize that was a statewide look. There's other language I don't know that it's I don't know that this other er language is relevant. So I'm not gonna get into it. It's something we can e can talk about later, but I don't think it affects this here another er question that I have is. What kind of safeguards do we have? Are we putting in place to ensure that the dollars of this bond are going to be spent appropriately
and that we hold to our commitment and that goes for the charter, the non charter schools like our district programs, but also are there any accountability measures in place for the charter schools too to make sure that the dollars they're getting are going to the projects that they're e telling us they're going to go to? I appreciate that question. I will tell you as you know, we passed a $230 million bond in 2016 and with that we convened a citizen's bond oversight committee
to meet frequently and take a look just like we have quarterly now reports to the board, there are quarterly citizens bond oversight committee because they look at the expenditures they also so look at the project list. When we put this list out that Mister Sacoliti showed a little bit ago by school, that's a commitment and we consider that a companion document to the bond language, and it's a commitment that this is what we are
going to follow through with. We might do more, but we're not going to do less. And that's a process that at we've monitored now for eight years. And we come before you, and you get to ask that representative from the Citizens Bond Oversight Committee. Are they using the dollars appropriately and meeting the requirements that are in this list that we've committed to? It's our word, it's integrity The same would be with this and we're hopeful that some of the same folks on that citizens bond oversight committee, some have stuck with
h us for eight years. So we'll say, hey, keep sticking with us and we will go through that same process. You will see the financials at least once 1/4 and it might be something that we do more frequently when the bond. 1st if it were to pass to 1st kick off, but we ensure that the charter schools and the non charter er schools that all of that work is being funneled through what we call our building fund team and
even though dollars are going to support projects s, let's see at Rampart High School that building fund team manages that to make sure the dollars are spent on the projects that we've committed to. And that we're doing everything appropriately the same for TCA and new Summit we e still manage those projects obviously they've e got someone at the school as a contact for us s, but we are ensuring that the dollars are spent in accordance with the commitment that was made.
Thank you. That's really good. So would we. Intend to have a second. Oversight committee for this bond until we'd run two different committees in tandem or would we our ur intent be to have the existing committee persist. I know you talked about having some of the same people on there, but we just try to basically let the committee as it exists take on this additional bond at that point for oversight. Yes and certainly have an opportunity if I always
s like to have an opportunity if we've got open seats. But we would encourage these folks if they want to go ahead we I don't think k we need to because remember the 20 16 bond is starting to sunset now We are in our last few projects that we are finishing up, we're finishing the transportation facility expansion. We are finishing some pool equipment pieces. Some document scanning so January the that winter time frame
certainly by the spring will be about wrapped up and so it would make sense that at we would ask does anyone want to continue nd then obviously for any opening seats we'd we'd encourage other people to come and be a part of that as well. Great. Thank you. I'll just take this opportunity to say that Mister Garnhardt and Brockway have done a phenomenal job with those committees I've sat on there e from the board role and I've really appreciated. Their care and how they've
performed their roles and it's been a great representation of the district, so I want to thank them for what they've done and hopefully they'll continue in those roles to help with this and at least get this started on the right track, even if they're not going to be here for the duration. When would we be able to start executing on this project list if we were to pass this in November? So, Mr Salt, one of the things that we have to keep in mind is that when we get the proceeds of the bonds, and what I mean by
that is if the bond were to pass in November, we need to be strategic around when we sell the If you recall for the 230 30 million bond measure from 2016, there were multiple issuances or multiple sales of the bonds. Why is that? Because when n we get proceeds from the bonds, we have 3 ree years to expend 85% or more of the bonds, so what we will do is put together charts to say
OK, all of these projects by school. What is the timing? There's no way they're all going to be done in three years. We would still be. It will take time to design Air Academy High School, So what we would do is plot out like in a Gantt chart of what is the timeline on when we e would attack all of these projects. Then we say OK, so in three years and I'm just using this as an n example, we think we'll expend $40 million because we think we can have enough. Companies come in and do do this work.
So then we probably would try for January to issue 40 million again that's just an example. And then we would get t through that time period and start to then plan for another issuance when we feel again that we're within 3 ree years of selling of spending 85 5% of the funds. And that's just part of the expectation that. An entity like us that we don't just sell hundreds and hundreds of millions of bonds
and just sit on it year after year accruing interest, that's not the purpose. That's why you're held to account to go ahead and make sure that the expense happens within a time period that is dictated. So that's the strategic side of it where we would decide what makes sense in comparing that with the rate with which we could complete the projects. Thank you so much. That's really helpful Board, any other questions? Yeah. Thank you so much. Miss Allen your
r work on this sort of stuff is always impeccable. I'm not entirely clear on CBOC yet, so the current CBOC is going to sunset and go away at some point in the foreseeable future, assuming these there is some overlap between the two, I so would the plan be to offer those persons on the C Bach now a seat on the new one and if any hoose not to just go to the community to seat replacements as opposed to? An entire new C Bach
Yes, because yes, Sir, because they have nstitutional knowledge that would be very helpful in in this process and then certainly ly for any vacancies that we have then we would have more people join that team again that they've an interest in it they they've devoted a lot of time now if for some reason I don't know how this would happen, but if there's if there's some reason that C Bach was just done e didn't need. For several months or something, then maybe then
it just doesn't continue, but on the trajectory we're looking at now, it would be quite possible meeting quarterly that it would just kind of flow one from the next if the bond were e to pass. Copy that. Thank you. Any other questions? All right, seeing none Thank you, Miss Allen. Now we need a motion to approve Resolution 256-24, Certification of Updated ballot Language for Bond Question appearing on November 5th, 20 24. Coordinated election ballot updated from bond language approved
during August 8th, 2024 Board of Education meeting. Moved second. All right. Any discussion board? All right. Hearing none move into the roll call Mrs. Konz, aye. Mrs. Shandy aye. Mr. Wilburn aye. Mrs. Yanez, aye. Mr. Salt aye. All right, we've had. Between 14 and 16 people hanging out with us this afternoon. Thank you all for taking the time to join us and listen
in on this important discussion there's nothing else. We will adjourn. Thank you all Thank you. Good night.